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Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Readers of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car are familiar with John Holtzapple, president of the Volvo Club of America and the longtime caretaker of a beautiful 1967 1800S.
John had let slip, last fall, that something special was happening with
his car, but it wasn’t until last week that we saw it for ourselves: It
was the ride of Jerry Seinfeld and Tina Fey in the weekly web series, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee.

We asked Lancaster, Pennsylvania, resident John to tell us how this came to be, and he kindly shared the story:

Jerry’s
production company in New York wrote an email to the Volvo clubs asking
if an owner of a 1967 1800 would be interested in making their car
available for a video cast. I responded for VCOA, asking which color and
features and what dates it would be needed, saying that we had many
members who might consider offering theirs. I mentioned Irv’s car, and that I had a red ’67.
They
wrote back asking for photos of mine, then wrote again a day later
saying that Jerry wanted to see more photos of the interior. After that,
they said he was interested in my car, and asked if it would be
available ‘so and so’ days for filming. After some back ‘n forth emails
and phone calls, we worked out a ‘rental’ agreement and finalized the
transportation, by them, for the car to – and back – from New York City.
They took it on a Sunday afternoon, for filming on Monday and Tuesday,
with overnight storage at the Classic Car Club of Manhattan
facility. Filming went great on Monday, but Tina became unavailable to
finish the shoot on Tuesday. They returned the car on Tuesday night as
promised, and picked it back up again the next week for one more day of
filming. Everything went off without a hitch, it was returned no worse
for wear.

Take a tour

One of my favorite quote from French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes:

I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them.[ Roland Barthes - Mythologies 1957]A collection of essays examining the tendency of contemporary socialvalue systems to create modern myths.

«What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.» [Roland Barthes]